One of my mates reckons that as Verstappen is Marko's golden boy and as such is not only favouring him but also hanging Ricciardo out to dry.

In Barcelona, i believed then and still believe now that both Verstappen and Raikkonen got extremely lucky with their strategy and that Ricciardo got what was thought to be the best strategy, it just didn't pan out for him.

In Monaco, Verstappen pits about a minute before Ricciardo does, his goes off without a hitch and Ricciardos is a botch to end all botches.

Not sure how to take Monaco, What i think may have happened is Verstappen was never meant to pit and as a result left the pit crew scrambling and the engineers confused.

My mate, however, believes Marko wanted to get Verstappen up the order and also make sure Ricciardo was on the back foot.

I have trouble believing this as why would they take the risk? Ricciardo was clearly a easy win and Verstappen, even with his pace, would've barely made 3rd, let alone 1st.

So, is Marko behind it all? Because it's not like it's only my friend who thinks it, Theres a lot of people out there who think the same!

_________________Any and all opinions are my own, they do not reflect the opinions of the FIA, FOM, Teams, Drivers, PlanetF1, Phase of the Moon, Rotation of the Earth or Aliens.

I had the tin foil hat on too after spain but it is really just nonsense. RB totally stuffed up dan again but it wasn't deliberate, it was just plain incompetence. There is no way they would purposefully loose that race with no other driver left.

When Max crashed I had a flashback to the Singapore incident where Alonso's team mate deliberately crashed bringing out the safety car and brought Alonso into play for the win.

It was clear straight away that there was nothing in Max's incident. Just a driver pushing hard to make up for a poor grid position. He is in good company as a few big names have gone off in exactly the same spot in the wet. One in a Red Bull that springs to mind is David

Re Ric's pitstopI hope Mateshitz fines Marko a Million or 2 from his bonus over this incident as it was simply one of the biggest stuff ups I have seen in a long time to not have tyres ready for the race leader.For him to have to wait an extra 10 seconds is just unbelievable, especially as they called him in.

One thing that should be clear is that Red Bull need to back Ricciardo. Yes Max might be the future of the sport. But he is in his 2nd year and it is clear that he is slightly rough around the edges.They should implement team orders in Ric favor and if the Merc drivers are taking points off each other for the rest of the year, who knows, maybe Ric could go under the radar and win the WDC this year.(We will know more after Canada just how close that new engine will get Red Bull to Merc)I would imagine if Rosberg was close to winning a WDC and Ric was in striking distance to win it, Ham would prefer to take his team mate out on track and let someone outside the team win it.

Apparently there is more to come with the engine as they were running it not at full power in Monaco. (Presumably to test reliability especially as at Monaco it was less than a 0.2 second improvement in lap time.)

Personally I am excited about F1 for the first time in a long time. Bring on closer racing. Now if Ferrari can get on top of their issues and Honda fix their engine, we could be in for an epic 2nd half of 2016 leading into 2017.

Thank you guys for your comments so far! I'm with you all. I'd love to hear someone from the other side of the fence though.

I can see why people COULD say it's a bit weird, Canada will be interesting!

Tin foil hat on: If RB screw Ricciardo again, i can certainly see him looking elsewhere in 2017.

Lewis was very lucky in that race for no action on that illegal corner cut and than not leaving room, i was shocked they allowed him to get away with that. Anyway will be interesting to see the true results of the updated renault PU in canada but i get the feeling the natural boring mercedes 1/2 order will be resumed.

There have definitely been unfortunate blunders in the last two races, but a conspiracy makes no sense to me. In Spain, a very stretched case could be made for it -- it at least gave them the win either way, only with a different car, and if they were desperately trying to hype up their newly-promoted driver it would almost make a very twisted sort of sense -- but I find it by far more likely that it was a misread of the best strategy, to the point where I'm really not going to consider the possibility of it being anything else unless I see some actual evidence of a conspiracy later. Monaco was a huge mess-up of the sort that one really doesn't expect to occur at all, much less from a top team, but conspiracy? I don't think so. It would be crazy for Red Bull to throw away a race win just to give one driver (and not the one leading in the standings, either) a leg up. There was nothing to be gained there and much to lose.

Canada should be interesting, surely. I would expect that at this point Red Bull will try their utmost to ensure that there are no strategy errors or pit stop mess-ups there, and with Ricciardo third in the standings (and well ahead of Verstappen) it would make sense for them to throw behind him completely if the new engine upgrade means they are actually able to challenge at tracks like Canada. We'll see.

How often do you get an actual apology from Dr. Helmut? they know they screwed up big time this race. Last race it could have gone either way and Ricciardo got the short end of the stick when he didn't deserve it.

Marko answers to Dietrich Mateschitz, the owner of Red Bull, Dietrich has invested a huge amount of money into both the Red Bull and Toro Teams. Ricciardo also came from the same process as Verstappen, via the Red Bull driver program and Toro Rosso. So both drivers are equally Marko's favorites.

Marko does not run the team, that power lays firmly within Horner's domain. Marko is an advisor, but Horner calls the shots and is held accountable for any problems.

I can not understand why people would believe a team would destroy themselves just because of .. what?

I also can not understand why some people fail to recognize that Ricciardo is one of the hottest properties in Formula One, and to drive him away and to another team is sheer stupidity. They lost Vettel, and he has done a lot of damage to Red Bull's ability to get points. If anyone hasn't noticed, Ferrari are leading Red Bull in the manufacturer's points.

At the end of the season when Bernie divides up the money based on manufacturer's points, the difference between second and third could easily be ten million dollars. Even for a well financed team like Red Bull, ten million is still a lot of money.

Thank you guys for your comments so far! I'm with you all. I'd love to hear someone from the other side of the fence though.

I can see why people COULD say it's a bit weird, Canada will be interesting!

Tin foil hat on: If RB screw Ricciardo again, i can certainly see him looking elsewhere in 2017.

Lewis was very lucky in that race for no action on that illegal corner cut and than not leaving room, i was shocked they allowed him to get away with that. Anyway will be interesting to see the true results of the updated renault PU in canada but i get the feeling the natural boring mercedes 1/2 order will be resumed.

Was he the only one to cut the chicane - NoDid he gain anything from cutting the chicane it - NoDid he leave enough space - Yes